Scoop: SAIC Connected To E-Voting Whitewash

EDITOR'S NOTE: Scoop has today published two breaking
news columns concerning SAIC connections to a PR campaign
proposal to clean up the bad news epidemic around electronic
voting in the United States. These stories contain raw
source material intended for re-use by other media outlets.
All news outlets are encouraged to make use of this
material.

On the
board of the Enterprise Solutions Division of the
Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) – a
lobbying organisation bidding to provide a $200,000+ public
opinion manipulation campaign on electronic voting – is
senior vice president of SAIC, the company tasked with
investigating the security of the Diebold voting machine
technology in the states of Maryland and Ohio.

The
revelation that
http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bin/nb06?_KNECHT_RONALD_JRonald
J Knecht, Senior Vice President, SAIC, and a former
defence intelligence chief, is connected to the proposed
voting machine whitewash push seems certain to fuel public
concerns about the number of conflicts on interest in the
voting machine industry.

SAIC has been tasked by the
Governor of the state of Maryland to report on security
concerns around Diebold Election Systems software and
hardware..

The document that follows is a
confidential internal memo, and is published here as
intended source material for the numerous US media presently
pursuing the Diebold FTP Files story broken here on Scoop.
(See… Google Breaking Headlines - Wired – Ohio
– New York Times – MSNBC )

It provides a rare glimpse into
the insides of a major corporate United States emergency PR
operation being run at full throttle.

In particular it
reveals the plan prepared by the Enterprise Solutions
division's Michael Kerr for the ITAA – an organisation
funded and representing many of the biggest defence
contractors - to clean up the public impression left by
recent revelations concerning the hackability of Diebold
Elections Systems software. Diebold's software source code
was left by the company on an open to the public insecure
FTP website and downloaded by investigators including
Seattle's Bev Harris.

The whitewash proposal has been
coordinated in association with the Election Center – a
seemingly chimerous body coordinating Secretaries of State
in the United States and which works closely with the body
tasked with certifying the electronic voting machine
certifiers.

This morning by phone Voting machine companies
from all over the United States (and remember this is a
NZD$8 billion + market) were asked for $200,000, to provide
a full service public relations assault. It includes
proposals to retain a pet think tank and for funding public
opinion polls to press the agenda of the manufacturers that
electronic voting machines are safe for democracy.

The
document proposes to aggressively sell the notion that
voting via a computer is the "gold standard" for any
democracy to aspire to.

Significantly the plan does not
suggest the voting industry convene a group to actually make
computer voting the gold standard, though it does suggest
cooperation on –non-competitive issues. Rather the clear
thrust of the proposal is to simply finance the creation of
a public impression of safety.

Also significantly, no
mention in the document is made of "Verifiable Paper Trails"
a cheap and effective solution to the problem of potentially
hackable electronic voting machines backed by a growing
group of eminent computer scientists led by David Dill of
Stanford University.

This morning in the phone conference.
Details of which will follow in subsequent report. One
participant commented that if David Dill was involved in the
efforts to influence the standards, "I'm sure noone would
want to play."

**********

See below…

…
for the full text of a public relations campaign proposal to
clean up the Diebold
E-voting stink proposed by the Information Technology
Association of America (ITAA) to players in the
multi-billion dollar voting machine manufacturing business
today.

The proposal was written by Michael Kerr of the
Enterprise Solutions division of the ITAA on Wednesday. It
calls for commitments of up to USD$200,000 by August 29th,
next Friday.

*************

ITAA
eVoting Industry CoalitionDRAFT Plan, Activities, and
Pricing

Purpose: Create confidence
and trust in the elections industry and promote the adoption
of technology-based solutions for the elections industry.
Repair short-term damage done by negative reports and media
coverage of electronic voting. Over the mid- to long-term,
implement strategy that educates key constituencies about
the benefits of public investments in electronic voting,
voter registration and related applications.

Audience:
Public confidence in the integrity of the ballot box is
absolutely critical to the democratic process. To build
such confidence, the vendor community must address several
constituencies:

1. Media2. Elected officials at the
federal, state and local level3. Elections
administrators, procurement officials and others involved in
the purchase decision 4. Academia5. General
public6. International counterparts7. Systems
integrators and related government contractors

Success Benchmark: Achieve widespread acceptance among
key constituencies that electronic voting is not just an
alternative to other balloting systems, but is the "gold
standard" to which all should aspire.

Model
1

Goals:

1. Help assure the integrity of
IT used in the electronic voting process2. Generate
positive public perception of the eVoting industry3.
Speak with a unified voice on industry standards4.
Develop liaison with key constituencies in order to build
broader support for e-voting5. Improve security of
technology and development/deployment processes 6.
Improve public awareness of voting technology security7.
Reduce substantially the level and amount of criticism from
computer scientists and other security experts about the
fallibility of electronic voting systems.8. Adopt an
industry code of ethics

10. Launch
public relations campaign to build media, customer, and
public awareness of new security and certification
processes.

Meeting/Events

1. Hold monthly
meetings in Washington D.C. or Dallas area

2. Hold
bi-annual full membership meetings

Fees in
addition to annual dues: $200,000+

Schedule

With the Iowa caucuses (and therefore the
start of the primary season) only five months away, time is
exceedingly short to implement this plan. Americans must
have full faith in the efficacy of the election systems
infrastructure. Numerous factors, including the overarching
need to conduct the 2004 election with no “hanging chad”
controversies, suggest that work commence with a minimum of
delay.

ITAA recommends the following schedule of major
milestones to bootstrap this effort:

August 29 ITAA
membership applications have been completed by the core
group of election systems companies

ITAA is ready,
willing and able to work with firms in the election systems
sector to build and, as necessary, restore, a high degree of
confidence in the integrity of e-voting and related
applications. ITAA provides an ideal forum to undertake
this program, offering:

1. a sophisticated government
affairs and public relations apparatus;2. over 20 years
of industry engagement in public sector contracting;3.
the premier trade association membership of contractors
involved in the federal systems marketplace;4. an
on-going state and local advocacy program; 5. an
existing Election Systems Task Force and internal staff
resources well schooled in the underlying issues;6. and
a track record of lobbying for federal funding to upgrade
state and local electronic systems.

ITAA applauds the
companies involved at the Election Center meeting for having
the vision and determination to address the current doubts
about election systems on an industry basis. Working
together, ITAA believes that these companies have already
taken the first step to meeting the common challenge.

**********

For More
Information

For more media resources and links
concerning the ITAA, The Election Center and R. Doug Lewis
the proponents of this campaign - see the following
companion Sludge Report. See also
http://www.blackboxvoting.com
http://www.blackboxvoting.com for more breaking making
news on this subject.

"The ES Division has championed many key
reforms on behalf of its members, including procurement
reform on both the state and federal level, led education
initiatives to raise awareness of the information security
issues in the government and commercial sectors, and worked
to augment the adoption of electronic commerce applications
at the state and federal level. We do this through a
vertical committee structure which allows division members
to work together, exchange ideas, and develop solutions to
common problems. "

Source –
ITAA

*************

A WHO'S WHO OF THE DEFENCE AND SOFTWARE INDUSTRY - ITAA
ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS DIVISION BOARD OF DIRECTORS

"ITAA applauds the companies involved at
the Election Center meeting for having the vision and
determination to address the current doubts about election
systems on an industry basis. Working together, ITAA
believes that these companies have already taken the first
step to meeting the common challenge."

Source - ITAA
(Michael Kerr's PR Proposal August
2003)

*************

IS THIS THE ELECTION CENTER AGENDA? - ELECTION CENTER ON
INTERNET VOTING

Internet Voting Overview

A
Message from R. Doug Lewis, Executive Director of The
Election Center

One of the hottest topics in elections
today is the potential use of the Internet for voting
purposes. The subject engenders much passion in some
quarters and supporters and opponents seem to be of widely
divergent opinions on whether its widespread use for voting
is "just around the corner."

The Election Center neither
supports nor opposes use of the Internet for voting. It is
simply another technology. Like other technologies which
offered to "revolutionize" the way we vote, it may or may
not ultimately have a place in American elections. The
papers or reports presented at this site are from
responsible government election officials who have studied
the issue. They are presented as food for thought by the
elections profession.

We have supported the limited tests
of Internet voting that are planned or have been conducted
because we believe some testing is necessary to determine
all the right questions to ask.

Our task, at The Election
Center and within the elections profession, is:

Sounds
like a "Tall Order" doesn't it? Actually, these are the same
kinds of concerns that go into the evaluation of any method
offered for voting. Elections administration concerns itself
with the safety, security, accessibility, integrity, and
cost questions for every election conducted in America. And
while we cannot always help the public to have the right
perception of the electoral process, we cannot ignore public
perception.

Over the course of the next year or so, we
will be making available "white papers" and official studies
by government bodies which explore the issues raised in
potentially applying this new technology. While we want to
hear your opinions and are willing to listen to a wide range
of points of view, we cannot publish all the comments of
those who wish to have a say in the subject.

We will
limit the published papers to those who have responsibility
for conducting elections, i.e., those government officials
who have to administer the electoral process. While others
may know the technology better than elections officials,
they have not had the responsibility of conducting elections
where the process must have an extraordinary level of
accountability to assure the integrity of an election…and,
ultimately, will be perceived by the public as being fair
and honest.

Use our public message boards to express your
opinions and views, or even to ask questions. If you are an
official of an elections related governmental agency and
have studied this issue and have developed an official
report or study, then please send those to us and they will
be listed at this site.

Scoop is NZ's largest independent news source; respected widely in media, political, business and academic circles for being the place on the internet for publishing "what was really said", and for the quality of its analysis of issues.

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